Part 3, page 18

Transcript

The scan is the source; the transcript is machine-generated from it.

Continued from 10th Page ad in newspapers around Oregon and Washington, asking Cooper to contact him.

Later, while Fleming and millionaire Max Palevsky were organizing LA, an in- termediary offered to put the newsman in contact with Cooper—for $30,000. Palevsky put up the money and Fleming flew up to meet Cooper, dragging along two tape recorders, a motion picture camera, two cameramen and $30,- 000 in cash.

The headline on the third and final installment read: "Is D. B. Cooper the real D. B. Cooper?" There is considerable reason for doubt, since the men who police say talked to Flem- ing — and who allegedly took his $30,000 — have been arrested by the FBI on charges of defrauding Fleming of his money.

Arrested Before Story

The arrest took place on May 2, long before Flem- ing wrote his story for LA.

Why did Fleming pub- lish the story in a manner that led some readers, un- aware of the fraud arrest, to believe that the early installments were the real thing?

Fleming doesn't feel that the initial installment was deceptive, noting that "there were disclaimers in it," referring to two lines near the end: "The fore- going narrative was relat- ed to me by the man I be- lieved to be Cooper . . ." and, "Doubts about wheth- er I had the right man would arise later. . . ."

"I wanted the reader to experience it just exactly as I did," Fleming says. "It's an adventure story, as much about me as about D. B. Cooper, and I wanted to put the reader in my shoes. If the reader was reasonably alert, he would have seen in the press that these guys had been busted by the FBI."

If the man Fleming in- terviewed was not D. B. Cooper — and Fleming isn't totally sure he was not the hijacker—then he was a masterful con man, to hear Fleming tell it.

Paid at First Meeting

"I gave him the whole $30,000 at our first meet- ing, after I was convinced that this was D. B. Coop- er," Fleming says. "At that point a con man would have taken the money and run like hell, but this guy, Cooper, came back and submitted himself to eight hours of taped interviews, 30 minutes of filmed inter- views and still photo- graphs. His intermediary signed a contract (saying the $30,000 would be used for Cooper's legal defense) with his real name and left his fingerprints all over the contract."

The story was to have been in the opening issue of LA. To avoid charges of aiding a fugitive from jus- tice, Fleming turned his material over to the FBI 10 days before publication (he had told Cooper not to tell him anything he didn't want the police to know.) Included were Xe- rox copies of the $20 bills Fleming had been shown as proof of Cooper's iden- tity. The serial numbers matched those on the list of ransom bills but FBI documents experts said that the photocopies indi- cated that the bills were counterfeit.

With all the information Fleming's subjects had supplied, the FBI had no [TEXT CONTINUES ON NEXT PAGE — CUT OFF]